Frozen Memories
by GirlOfLegend
Summary: What really happened before The Ultimate Enemy that led Vlad to make that fateful decision? Good intentions do not always end that way.


**We don't know about the days before Danny was killed in Ultimate Enemy. The subject was something that wasn't really allowed to be breached in DP. Well I'm breaching it.**

** Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom**

* * *

He pressed his face against the clean glass, looking out at London's vast expanse of buildings and streets, a thin dusting of white snow over it all. People in warm winter attire made their way around, so small compared to the great city that they resided in. A fair sized crowd lingered in a park, children throwing snowballs at each other and building forts while their parents sat on benches with watchful eyes.

The hotel was in an old part of town, all cobblestone streets and maze-like streets and alleys with a historic feel to the place. Little shops lined the street of the hotel, boutiques, restaurants, and antique stores, reminding Danny of something out of an old novel that he was forced to read in English class a few months back. His heart ached at the thought.

London wasn't Danny's first choice for his vacation: he was thinking of somewhere more secluded and peaceful than the bustling city in England. He hadn't wanted to go anywhere at all in truth, but he was being forced to by his new...guardian. Vlad had frowned at his lack of enthusiasm when he suggested it. But they'd ended up going, seeing as Danny wasn't really jumping at the opportunity to choose anywhere else.

Vacations weren't really on his mind lately. There were too many other thoughts jumbled up and taking up space in there, the ones he wanted to forget the most being the ones that surfaced most often. He'd lost his family, friends, and teacher only a few weeks ago in a tragic accident. It was his fault, even when everyone was telling him it wasn't he knew it was. He was the only one that could've saved them and he just wasn't fast enough. If he hadn't made that first mistake, hadn't thought that it would all be OK they'd all still be there.

The day after it happened Vlad had come to pick him up and take him back to Wisconsin. Danny remembered looking back one last time at his home with his suitcase in hand, memories playing on repeat in his mind. It made his heart hurt.

He didn't bother putting up a fight. What was there left to fight for?

The last few weeks had been filled with depression and emptiness that followed him like his own shadow, always leaning over him, making him remember. He wished he didn't have to remember, but forgetting was impossible. You can't forget the people who were your whole life.

Danny couldn't bring himself to care about things as much anymore. He spent most of his time alone in his room in the mansion, brooding. He made so many mistakes. This was his punishment.

The hotel they were staying in was an old one, built sometime in the eighteen hundreds, and the doors were accustomed to creaking loudly when you opened them. Danny heard this sound now, and an arm wound itself gently around his shoulders.

"Hello Little Badger," Vlad said, taking a seat next to him in front of the window, turning his solemn gray-blue eyes to the outside view. "I'd think you'd be outside on a day like this, exploring the city. With a jacket of course," he added.

"I didn't feel like it..." Danny replied, ignoring the use of the man's nickname for him.

On a normal day, he would have called Vlad a Fruitloop, starting one of their many short-term arguments that ended in one of them going home with a plot for revenge on the other. That hadn't happened for a while now.

Now everything was all twisted around, like looking in a mirror and seeing everything backwards. He was living with his archenemy, and they hadn't really had memorable fights in the last few weeks. Archenemy didn't even seem like a correct term anymore, he had to admit. You hate your archenemy, you stand in their way. Danny and Vlad weren't like that anymore. And now he had to wonder, were they ever at all?

Now that he thought about it, maybe true archenemies were a rare thing. It takes a lot to truly hate someone as long as you know them, a lot to keep that fire burning. He had never really hated Vlad. He was annoyed with him, had many times wanted to knock him unconscious, but wasn't that what people did, even the best of friends sometimes?

This revelation was confusing to him. If Vlad and him weren't enemies, then what exactly were they?

"Oh come now. I'll even go out with you. Perhaps we could enjoy a day out."

He looked pleading, trying a last resort. He had been struck hard too with the blow of his love's death, and dare he admit it, his former best friend's. He even felt pity for their oldest daughter, and he had barely known her. He grieved in private, not wanting anyone to see. He didn't care that people thought he had a stone heart.

Danny on the other hand had one of glass, and not the bulletproof kind. It had been broken, slowly fixing its pieces back together, more missing each time and hurting all the while knowing it would probably just fall apart all over again. A repetitive process, beautiful but pointless in Danny's opinion.

"Fine."

Leaving the careful, calm quiet of the hotel room and it's it comfortable bed behind was the last thing he wanted to do but he knew Vlad wasn't about to give. He had that determined fire in his eyes. It was something Danny hadn't seen in a while.

"Wonderful," The older Halfa replied with a smile, opening the closet and shrugging on his coat.

"What are you doing?" Danny asked, leaning lightly against the large window. He looked almost ethereal, a faint white glow outlining his form from the snow outside, dark colors mingling with the light. Black hair hung over melancholic icy blue orbs.

"Coming with you." Vlad's struggled to keep his voice at an almost cheery tone as he zipped his black ski jacket. Daniel didn't need to be around any more sadness.

Danny nodded slightly, forcing himself away from the quiet expanse of white topped London. He grabbed his own coat out of the walk-in closet and down the stairs, opened the door into the hardy weather of mid-January.

A cold blast of air invaded his senses, blowing small flakes of snow from piles on the ground into his eyes. He blinked from the sudden assault and trekked out onto the snow covered street. People barely gave him a second look.

A hand on his shoulder. "Want to go for some hot cocoa? You look like you could use some." Vlad steered him in the direction of a nearby café with clean front windows and groups of people sipping at their drinks and taking bites out of pastry's. Most were with someone and having a conversation, but some sat alone with their electronic devices or a book. There were even a few who just stared out the window with a faraway look in their eyes, content to just watch the world go by.

Danny walked inside with his head down, the warm air of the place pleasant of his frostbitten face and hands. He didn't think to grab gloves before leaving the hotel. He hung back at the front doors, hands in his pockets. He didn't feel the motivation or the will to go order himself anything. The red haired cashier looked at him expectantly, a bored frown on her face. She drummed her fingers on the counter, a metal ring on her right hand glinting. Danny tried to see if there was a stone or words on it but it just appeared to be a normal ring.

The door opened again and he stepped aside to let Vlad and the new freezing breeze through. The other Halfa was curious at Danny's reluctance to move but said nothing, ordering two hot cocoas at the counter and sitting down at a booth in the back of the café.

Danny slid into the seat opposite him and pushed himself as far against the wall as was possible.

"We need to talk."

He didn't nod or shake his head. He didn't do anything.

"We Do Daniel. You can't go on forever this way. You -"

"How do you know?" Danny whispered. "You aren't me. You don't know." It seemed like he wanted to say more at the end of his sentence, but he cut himself off there.

This stung Vlad, a sharp jab to his heart. "I know that. And I never will be. But I do know you don't deserve this pain. You need to... you need to let the past go, Little Badger."

"It's not that easy," Danny replied, his voice more audible. "I can't let go of everything I ever had. And what would I be letting it go for. This?" He gestured around the café. "This isn't the life I wanted Vlad. Call me selfish, I don't care! "

A waiter brought their hot cocoa, steaming with curls of smoke from large pale blue mugs to their table. He smiled at them.

"Hope you enjoy," he said cheerfully, disappearing into the door that presumably led to the kitchen.

No one touched their drinks. Vlad barely noticed they were even there.

"It may not be the life you wanted," he said calmly. "But it's the one you have I'm afraid. Don't let it do this to you."

Danny shook his head in disagreement and slid out of the booth. "I can't do this anymore." His voice was breaking, his heart cracking down the middle. Then he left the restaurant, not even bothering to grab his jacket.

"Daniel..." Vlad followed suit after reminding himself to take the jacket, his shoes sinking into the snow on the sidewalk as Danny stopped at a park bench in the shadow of a large tree, its branches barren of it's leaves for the winter. The teen put his head in his bare hands, shaking from the cold without his jacket.

Vlad sat next to him without hesitation, putting the jacket around his small shoulders. "I wish I could make things right."

"Well you can't. No one can make things right anymore." His voice sounded so broken, like he was just dropped from the highest point in the world. "You can't erase the past."

Vlad looked up at the tree that was shielding them from nothing. It was dead, it's branches skeletal fingers reaching out to the city. It would come back in the spring though, lush and full of green foliage. It was waiting to live again. Danny was just waiting to die.

"I know. But I can help someone that's been thrust too soon from it."


End file.
